SIGNATURES ÉMOTIONNELLES DANS L’ŒUVRE ROMANESQUE D’AHMADOU KOUROUMA : APPROCHE STATISTIQUE ET COMPARATIVE
EMOTIONAL MOTIFS IN THE NOVELS OF AHMADOU KOUROUMA: A STATISTICAL AND COMPARATIVE APPROACH

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the emotional dimension of Ahmadou Kourouma’s novels, based on the hypothesis that this author’s subversion of the French language is not confined to the syntactic and lexical levels, but also involves, in a profound way, a reconfiguration of emotions. Although previous research has largely focused on the ‘Malinkisation’ of French, on orality and on the socio-political significance of his novels, the emotional structure of his writing has yet to be systematically studied. To address this gap, we adopt a mixed methodology combining corpus linguistics, lexicometry and literary analysis. The selected corpus consists of five novels by Ahmadou Kourouma: Les Soleils des indépendances, Monnè, outrages et défis, En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, Allah n’est pas obligé and Quand on refuse on dit non. To ensure uniform processing, these texts were prepared as plain text files. They were then analysed using the Tropes software and the EMOTAIX scenario, which automatically identifies lexical units associated with emotions, whether expressed literally or figuratively. The results obtained were consolidated into a single table and then processed in Excel using pivot tables, relative frequencies, over-representation ratios and measures of dispersion, notably the standard deviation. This approach not only makes it possible to measure the prevalence of negative and positive valences, but also to identify significant lexical absences and to identify the emotional signatures specific to each novel. The study demonstrates that Kourouma’s writing is characterised by a high degree of emotional intensity, in which suffering, violence, rage and disillusionment predominate, while varying according to the narrative context. It also reveals the importance of figurative language, which reflects the way in which the author transforms the French language to express the postcolonial experience as accurately as possible. Finally, this approach allows us to objectify reading intuitions and to show that Kourouma’s work constitutes a genuine politics of emotion, in which the reinvention of language involves a profound transformation of its affective economy.

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